Why does the touring plan have me going to Expedition Everest and the Safari during the 8-9am Extra Magic Hours instead of Flight of Passage? Seems like rope drop/EMH would be the best time to ride FOP.
You have to publish your plan for us to look at it. (You posted YOUR link, not the publish link.)
But in general, rope-dropping any in-demand ride such as FOP is only helpful if you are at the FRONT of the RD line. So it depends on how early you really want to get there to RD.
But if you aren’t at the head of the RD, then you will still end up with a long wait. In which case, you might save more waiting time overall (not specifically for FOP) if you take advantage of the almost ZERO wait you’ll experience on everything else while everyone else is trying to RD FOP.
In other words, RDing the most popular ride to reduce your wait there means you are then going to be hitting the lines of everything else at times after their lines have increased. Saving 40 minutes on FOP, then, might wait more time than if you save 15 minutes on each of 5 other rides by going on those rides first.
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We can’t see the plan. You have to “Publish” it. To do so, click on your plan. In the large gray box, at the top of the page & before all your activities, click Edit. A pop-up window will appear. You originally saw this when making the plan with dates & times. Right above the blue “Save” button you’ll see a check box next to “Publish this plan”. Check that and you’ll be taken back to the plan. Now in the large gray box, at the top, you’ll see a link that you can click / copy & paste.
You can see the difference in your original link and this one, from my dashboard, that is published -
How early would front of the rope drop line be? The Extra Magic Hours are 8-9am. Would getting there at 7am be early enough to be at the front of the rope drop line?
I though I was so good sharing that touring plan, but I’ve failed again.
What’s the date of the trip? It’s a good idea if you really want to RD FoP to be there at least an hour in advance. However, if you are going during a peak holiday time you’ll want to get there earlier.
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I don’t know, personally. Although, I have to point out that in order to save time in line for FOP, getting there an hour early means you are actually waiting 60 minutes PLUS whatever your wait time at RD will be. So, really, you might end up waiting LONGER than if you just do FOP later in the day (late afternoon or evening, wait times can start to drop off a bit).
But not using valuable morning park time to queue.
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That’s why you don’t RD Pandora, and instead RD everything else. 
But you still have to wait for FOP at some time. You can arrive an hour before the park opens, and be off before it opens and have all your park hours for other rides. If you ride during the park day, you’re going to wait a couple of hours, meaning the rest of your park day is cut short. Or you can get in line 10 mins before park closes, and probably wait less than an hour. So with rope dropping or riding at close are still the least waiting.
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That’s the point though. That isn’t true. Because by the time you get OFF FOP, the other rides that had zero wait, or smaller wait, have all increased. For example, if I put in my plan to RD Navi, it says my wait is 25 minutes. If I put it SECOND in my list (so arriving just 20 minutes later), the wait time jumps to 48 minutes!
Anyhow, it isn’t just me saying so. TouringPlans, it seems, agrees. I tried all different configurations in my AK plan trying to put FOP first in my plan, but the overall wait time for the rest of the day went higher. But putting FOP in the afternoon, I end up with a 97 minute wait on FOP itself, but overall wait time in the parks decreased dramatically.
TP doesn’t agree as much as it doesn’t account for you not arriving at the front of the pack. I did it in August and was off FOP before the park officially opened at 8am, and walked on to NRJ, which wasn’t in our plans, and also then walked on to EE, which also wasn’t in our plans (because we had a later FP). Yes that’s anecdotal - but it’s pretty standard for anyone who is there an hour early. By rope dropping, we fit 2 extra rides into our plan.
So they let you on the ride before they even opened? Is this standard practice?
Yes.
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Huh. I’ve never been to any amusement park that does this. Even Disney. Maybe only for on-site guests? Generally, you are held at the gate or whatever the official “rope drop” location is until the exact time.
FOP has been opening way before official park opening since the day it opened. And HS/EP have always, in my experience, opened around 10-15 mins before official opening.
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I think we will try to rope drop FOP and if the line is already backed up too far we will go to EE and Safari.
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https://www.easywdw.com/easy/blog/avatar-flight-of-passage-8am-rope-drop-touring-strategy-at-disneys-animal-kingdom/
And there’s plenty of video’s available too, most of which mention boarding FOP even before park opening.
Thanks! I’ll check these out